My Garden of Thoughts: Reflection #3 -- Trauma Informed Education

 

https://koinoniahomes.org/koinonia-receives-trauma-informed-care-training-grant/

    This week in Wendy Middlemiss and Kaylee Seddio's article for Family Life Educators (FLEs) titled, "Research Update for Practitioners: Trauma-informed Education", they both explored why it is essential that FLEs must be trained to work with clients who have experienced some sort of trauma.

    Being an FLE requires being informed of all the potential areas in a family's life that needs special attention or education guidance. Because of this, trauma and trauma informed care cannot be overlooked. Middlemiss and Seddio gave examples in their article of trauma informed education that specifically looked at the HOW, WHY, and WHERE of this kind of mental health care. They believed that FLEs should not only be focused on addressing the importance of family wellbeing, but also on making sure they have the right tools and educational material to undertake these situations and make families rise out of traumatic experiences stronger than before.

    When reading this article, I was impressed that trauma education is now being spread into the FLE career. This can only be advantageous as research continually reports on a regular basis how much trauma is affecting individuals, couples, and families. Not only do we need more resources available to the public, but we need programs and courses that can help them work on practical skills that have been found to help too. I can see how having services geared toward help families with "divorce, weather-related disasters, a family member returning from deployment, or an instance of power-based violence within the family, school, or community" would benefit both the families and other mental health providers (pg. 2). 

    In the future, I plan on becoming a therapist who works with patients suffering from PTSD. However, the stigma of getting help for mental illness becomes less pervasive, the influx of new clients with increasingly become overwhelming for the system of mental health providers like me. That is why I find this article very comforting. We need more programs that will aid in helping people get the care and tools they need as they wait to be seen by a therapist (if the waitlist to be seen is extensive). 

Overall, I'm thankful we get to learn this material alongside FLEs that are currently in the field!

- E.